My daughter was in one of the younger classes at this studio, and from the beginning we had an awkward experience. We never were aware of what was happening - there was no posted calendar system, and emails would have attachments that didn't work.
As a dad, I would ask the other dancers (older girls) to take my daughter to get her diaper changed, as there were regularly girls in states of undress near the restrooms, and when I would bring it to the attention of the owner and the manager, I would be told "yeah, that's how our girls are".
As we got closer to the recital, we were excited (for the daddy dance and to see our daughter). We paid the fees, bought the costume, and waited for it to come together. The costume that was picked for the youngest group fit terribly, and when we mentioned it, we were told "yeah, that one won't fit, it's really designed for an older age group"... why did we pay that kind of money for a costume that the teachers KNEW would not fit.
Closer to the recital, my wife and I were approached by the front office manager with a set of raffle tickets (this was badly explained). They proceeded to pressure us to try to sell a 50/50 raffle to our friends and family that would already be buying tickets to see our daughter dance. Incidentally there were no comp tickets for parents, or even for myself, who was participating in the daddy/daughter dance.
At the recital, everything went from awkward to bad... the entrance to the back stage was also the changing area for the older dancers (also the only way to get to the prep area for the youngest girls). I was able to walk through when we first arrived, but after that it became similar to the restrooms at the studio itself.
There was no onstage practice before the performance, and there was no glow tape set at the edge of the stage. When my daughter wandered (as 2 year olds do) toward the edge immediately before the performance, the owner leapt towards her, and knocked her over. While this barely prevented her from falling off the stage, it also scared her badly, and instead of dancing during the recital, she sat at the side and screamed for my wife and I. My wife wound up getting my daughter from the stage during the performance because she was crying so hard.
While we watched the recital, we noticed that the majority of the dances were choreographed to be very sexy, even for the six and seven year old dancers. This was enough to let us know we did not want our daughter to continue in that studio. There was even a solo dance with a very young girl gyrating on a bed.
As if this wasn't enough, when we left after my daughter finished "performing", my family tried to exit through the rear doors only to find that they had been taped across and were blocked from the outside, in clear violation of fire code. When we tried to open them, we were told "you need to go back in and use the doors toward the edge, not the ones in the middle of the auditorium".
Finally, we approached the manager of the studio to tell her about our discontent with the entire situation, and the fact that my daughter had not gotten to perform at all, and that the doors were illegally blocked. We were told "yes, that sometimes happens". There was no apology, and there was no empathy from them.
It was a terrible experience, and we chose to hold off posting this until we got the video from the recital, on the off chance that it wouldn't get released to us had we posted immediately following the fiasco.
No one from the studio, except for the owners sister apologized to us for the experience we had. I would not recommend this studio to anyone. read more